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What would you have me compared to, then?
The scorpion that strayed too far under the sun
and stung itself to death, or the sightless
mole that kept digging circles in the same
archaic dirt? And why should it matter,
there’s nothing left; nothing
but a silence more perfect than music;
no blinding shafts of imaginary light,
and no Judgment waiting at the end of that light;
there is no light. It was ever only this:
beyond existence, merely the mystery;
beyond the mystery, merely one's choice—
faith or doubt—and nothing else.
Man is soiled only by the sin of his servility,
bound only by the fear of his freedom;
the shackles of guilt, the gallows of shame,
Nature commanded to kneel at the cross,
flagellate itself and beg for forgiveness—
what are these if not the vulgar shadows
cast between the columns of Fear and Otherness?
I fought to overthrow this abject indemnity,
eradicate our irrational superstitions,
and focus the power and purpose of existence
toward its rightful object: existence.
These are the only wars worthy of humanity.
But here is your unimpeachable corpse—
and better that I sought the “unholy” truth
and found only poverty, madness and death,
than were I to have sat still, waiting to be found.
Reason was never more frightening than this.

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I thought I had a ticket to the show and not the tell,
a tangible paradise and not the usual Heaven Above,
a place where a man can get the hell out of his own way.
Maybe you've heard of it. They say it doesn’t advertise,
never hires, never trades, never drafts players and ferries
them off to one team or another according to who'd
served the harshest penance, who'd kept playing
through injury upon injury inflicted upon logic,
or who'd played for the winning team in the right
colored uniforms—no, no, nothing like that.
This place doesn’t kill for attention,
and it doesn’t have other abject dependency needs.
It doesn’t have needs at all. It simply is, like a basket of
beach balls at the grocery store as you’re headed toward
the edible produce. And today I saw something simpler still—
an immigrant kid selling bundles of roses at my freeway exit.
I was stopped in traffic watching the kid, and when the light
turned green and everyone was about to go through, a family
several cars ahead of me stopped to buy roses from him.
They must have handed him a large bill and he was running it
back to his cart to make change—all of this taking place
as the lane to my right was moving along as smoothly as you
please—and suddenly I was a shotgun loaded with impatience.
My eyes on that stopped car and that kid keeping it stopped
were like sights on a barrel, and I clicked off the safety and
yelled out the window: “Goddamn it, move, you assholes!!!”
Which was wholly unnecessary. They finished with plenty
of time for everyone to make it through. Then it hit me:
How could I be angry at those people, and for no good
reason since they didn't even hear me? The whole
thing took about six seconds, an infinitesimal lapse
of time, even in the secular perception of time.
Certainly those seconds meant nothing to me,
and yet so complete was my instantaneous wrath,
so infantile and malevolent,
as if I had something more important to attend to,
a raft of other sinners waiting to be judged, and these
“assholes” throwing their wrench in the works. It was such a
flash-flood of irrational fear, you’d think I had no respect
for people at all. I'm guessing the ticket was counterfeit.

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Bless the black mold growing unchecked across the bathroom
ceilings and the permanent stench of dog-pissed carpet.
Bless the duct tape webbing the windows, the insect carcasses
left in the sills, and bless the drapes condemned by moths,
crucified on aluminum rods. Bless the sofa’s cigarette burns,
the unclean countertops crawling with ants, the breadcrumbs
feeding the roaches underneath the toaster. Bless the photographs
of obedient frowns. Bless the dust on their beaten frames.
Bless the bibles and other examples of bad fiction best ignored.
Bless the blaring gospel hour and the telephone receiver left off the
hook. Bless this celebration of shame. Bless this rapturous running sore
and its captured minds cowering inside. O bless their hearts. Amen.

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Should a god fall out of the American sky
like a faded leaf, I’ll run to you.
Should the parchments burn, the columns buckle
and the monuments collapse, I’ll run to you.
And should the last captain abandon ship
in a sea of panic, I’ll run to you
and (laughing) kiss you
like a kid running through an autumn forest,
crushing the faded leaves.

I'm Michelle. This is my blog. I write about women and fatness, expound upon semi-coherent thoughts I have in the middle of the night, and offer tough love to those in whom I am disappointed; they are legion.